Timing Poor For Mideast Trip

WASHINGTON — President Clinton's Middle East trip is fraught with peril, both diplomatic and physical, and comes at the worst possible moment for a president fighting impeachment.

The best Clinton can say about his four-day trip to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip _ which begins today _ is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

On the eve of Clinton's arrival, two Palestinians were shot dead and scores of others wounded on Friday in the West Bank as increasingly violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian stone-throwers threatened to become the focal point of the president's visit to the region.

Whatever hopes administration officials may have had that a triumphal Middle East visit would blunt the drive to impeach the president seemed to wither in the face of the rapidly collapsing Wye River peace agreement.

Still, the White House said on Friday that Clinton intended to press ahead with the visit.

``I do not think the president has had any second thoughts for a minute about going on this trip,'' national security adviser Samuel ``Sandy'' Berger said.

The visit will be Clinton's fourth to Israel _ no other president has visited more than once while in office _ and was planned after 85 hours of nonstop negotiating at the Wye conference in October.

With everyone bleary from lack of sleep, Clinton hatched the idea to assure the Israelis that the Palestinians would reaffirm a letter Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had given Clinton in January revoking clauses in the Palestine Liberation Organization charter that call for the destruction of Israel. Clinton decided to go to the Gaza Strip himself on Dec. 14 and witness the event.

For Arafat, the trip would mark the first time a U.S. president had set foot on Palestinian-controlled soil. And no matter what Clinton said to the contrary, Arafat knew it would be seen by much of the Arab world as a tacit endorsement of a Palestinian state.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the move could finally put to rest a symbolic, but important, issue for his fragile coalition: Why should Israel continue to turn over land to the Palestinians as part of a peace process if the Palestinians were still formally committed to the ``armed struggle to liberate Palestine'' and to the ``elimination of Zionism in Palestine,'' as two clauses in their 34-year-old charter stated?

And there was an upside for Clinton, too. He once again would be seen as an international peacemaker, and would once again get the opportunity to drive the Monica Lewinsky story off the front pages for at least a few days.

That was in October. Now it is December, and when Clinton lands at Ben Gurion airport in Israel tonight he will find a nation in turmoil with almost daily rioting in the Palestinian territories and at least four people killed and scores wounded in the past week.

Posters saying ``Clinton Go Home'' and showing the president dressed in Arab headgear have been pasted up throughout Jerusalem, and Israeli officials are openly saying they expect a terrorist attack on the president.

The situation is so bad that White House aides, who wanted to announce a three-way meeting between the leaders during the trip, were unable to do so on Friday and were forced to say they were still trying to work it out.

On the prisoner-release issue, the United States has sided with Israel.

On the issue of reaffirming the revocation of offending clauses in the Palestinian charter, the United States is siding with the Palestinians, who say the measure does not need a vote by the full Palestinian National Council, as Israel is demanding. The PLO's central council voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to revoke the offending sections. The full Palestine National Council is expected to endorse that on Monday at a special session to be attended by Clinton.

And Clinton will be out of the country at a time when, some aides say, he needs to be working the phones at home to line up votes of support to avoid being impeached by the House.

So why didn't Clinton just call the whole trip off?

``We want to see some momentum return as a result of this trip,'' said P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the National Security Council. ``If we did not go, that would send precisely the wrong signal.''

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on Friday:

``President Clinton is traveling to the region tomorrow in order to fulfill the commitments that America made at Wye and to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to meet theirs,'' she said. ``We knew when we left Wye that we would be facing a bumpy road, and some of those bumps have already been jarring. But there can be no question that Wye has moved us farther down the road toward peace and away from the long and dangerous impasse that preceded it.''

The trip has only one concrete purpose _ the revocation of the charter clauses _ and if the Palestinians can be convinced to do it in a way that will be acceptable to Israel, Clinton can count the trip as a diplomatic victory.